My Brief Dividend Growth History

Two years ago this month I was 27 years old and I had just opened an online brokerage account with aspirations to build a portfolio for my family's future. I slowly put together a watchlist of stocks and concentrated on saving money and learning as much as I could about stocks and the market. Over time, and as I educated myself, I became naturally attracted to dividend growth investing. The characteristics of dividend growth investing which drew me in are many, and the enthusiastic authors of The DIV-Net will likely cover several of these attributes in detail.

In August of 2006 my dividend portfolio of stocks yielded less than $150/year in income. As the months went by I continued to save money regularly and buy dividend stocks when I felt that they offered good value. Many of the companies I own have raised their dividends several times since I originally bought chunks of them. By August of 2007 my yield had grown to $1,252/year, and today it sits at $2,087/year. Today I continue to view dividends as half of my journey to financial freedom. Dividends are the brushstrokes that I put on today, in creating a masterpiece for the future.

I've been through a lot as a dividend investor, but yet I've been through nothing. I'll write more about what I mean by this in next week's post.

This article was written by the moneygardener.